I first learnt English in secondary school. For most of my childhood and adolescence, I only spoke Vietnamese. Back in my country, English was a required subject in school. There was hardly any difference to us between learning English and Math. You learn some grammatical structures and words as you would mathematical formulas, and then you make some sentences. I had no strong feelings towards learning English at all. I never used it to communicate outside my classes.
After I graduated, I started to use English formally for the first time for my diploma degree, as the materials were all in English. However, the teaching was still delivered in Vietnamese. Although I understood the material, I never really learnt how to speak the language. It wasn’t until I came to Singapore when I started to pick up conversing in English as the courses were all taught in English.
I use English daily now mostly for research and talking to my colleagues and friends. Yet, I still can’t really use English outside of these contexts. For instance, I don’t understand much when I listen to music or watch movies without subtitles. English as a language has much more depth than what I have acquired. It’s not just a tool to learn some facts. People sing their hearts out with it. People share their life stories with it. It’s a safe where people keep their thoughts and memories. It’s English as a human language that helps speakers of it to speak, to read, to share, to feel, to be aware, to remember, to understand and to be understood. I may spend many more decades using this language and still be unable to unlock the intricacies and beauty of this language, something that many of you who are native speakers can do effortlessly. Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that worth keeping?
I wish everyone a wonderful International Day of Multilingualism.
This post was written by Tuan Anh, our Research Fellow. He came to Singapore in 2008, and now he’s our knowledge engineer, computational linguist, and IT expert!